Hope For The Hopeless
by LostFan4life
Summary: Used to be called Hope. Hope is a dangerous thing to lose. They were two people looking for hope in hopeless situations, but fate has a funny way of giving hope when you least expect it. But will their secrets keep them apart? Jate AU


Author's Note: I started this story two years ago, but I never finished it. After Lost went off, I left the world of Fanfiction. Recently, I found my way back and started to remember how much I loved Fanfiction and all of the stories that I had written. This story was one of my favorite ideas, so I decided to pick it back up. Since it has been two years since I first posted this story, I decided to completely rewrite it. I wanted to add more detail and make this story even better than it was before. Please feel free to review and give some ideas, and share your thoughts with me. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this story!

**Hope For The Hopeless**

Prologue

"_Congratulations, you're pregnant."_

Those were not exactly what she had wanted to hear. It's not that she didn't want to have a baby, she did… someday. She had always wanted to be a mother. When she was younger, she had imagined living in a huge house with the white picket fence, her three children running around playing, and her husband sitting on the porch with his arms wrapped around her as they watched their kids play. This was not part of her plan; she was not supposed to be pregnant and alone.

She wished that she would have received this news a few weeks ago, before Tom had left her for another woman. Maybe if she had found out she was pregnant before Tom had broken up with her, they would still be together. She knew she was kidding herself; there was nothing she could have done to make him stay with her.

He had told her that he had met someone else, someone prettier, smarter, and skinnier than her. Those words had hurt her more than she would ever let him know. They had been together since high school, and they had been best friends since elementary schools. She had always imagined that they would grow old together. She had hoped that when people looked up perfect in the dictionary, they would find Tom and Kate Brennan as the description. Thinking back on it now, it all seemed so cheesy. True love only existed in fairy tales, and Kate Austen's life was far from a fairy tale.

Now here she was left alone, without Tom to help her. How was she going to raise a baby by herself? She could barely afford her rent and food, but now she was going to have to pay doctor's bills, and baby stuff. There were always other options; abortion, adoption, she knew that she didn't have to raise it herself, if she didn't want to. Abortion seemed to be out of the question, she couldn't kill a baby, it wasn't it's fault she was in this situation. Adoption sounded like a good idea, but she wasn't sure if she could part with her baby once it was born. She didn't have any family, at least none that she was still talking to.

Her mother had stopped speaking to her after they had gotten into a fight about Wayne, Kate's abusive step-father. When Kate had given her mother the ultimate to choose between Wayne and herself, her mother choose Wayne, just like she always had. After that, Kate decided it was best to part ways from her mother. She refused to watch Wayne continue to abuse her mother, she had to leave and never look back.

Kate's really father was in the army and never really had much time to talk to her. It was normally a letter every few months, and sometimes a five minute phone call, if she was lucky. Her dad loved her, but he had never really been a big part of Kate's life.

The only person that had ever really been a constant in her life was Tom and he was out of the picture now. She knew that keeping this baby was going to be hard, but she had already lost so many people in her life, she was not about to lose the only thing she had left.

"_I've met someone else."_

Those four words hurt more than anything he had ever experienced. He knew that they were coming, but it didn't make them any easier to hear. They had been having problems for months now, and the blame had always come back on him. According to her, he worked too much and never had any time for her. He knew that he worked too much, that was what spinal surgeons did… fix people and save lives. She knew that going into this marriage. Lately though, he had throw himself into work more than he ever had before. It had started after their first fight and had only worsened with every fight thereafter.

It had never been the fairytale marriage that he had dreamt about. She had been his patient and he had been her doctor. He went out with her out of pity; her fiancé dumped her after he found out that she would probably never walk again and Jack couldn't deal with her being alone when she really needed someone. He wanted to make sure that she was okay, but that had led to other things. Making sure she was okay somehow turned into two years of dating and one year of marriage.

It wasn't that he didn't love her, he did, but he wasn't in love with her. The hardest thing about this divorce was the fact that he had failed once again. His father would be so disappointed that he had failed yet again. He had failed Sarah, his father, and even himself. If it was one thing that he hated, it was failing people. He had an obsession with trying to be perfect, trying to prove to everyone that he had what it took.

He knew that he would hear a lecture once word spread to his father. He was once again have to hear about how much of a disappointment he was and how he would never really amount to much. It was amazing how he could feel so alone, even when he was surrounded by so many people.

Hopeless. He felt completely and utterly hopeless. And even more than that, he felt alone.


End file.
